Douglass was CBS's lead campaign reporter for the 1984 presidential race, and took over as KCBS-TV's political editor from 1983 through 1985, co-anchoring the evening news from Los Angeles, where the station is based.

She covered the presidential campaign in 1992, and then moved to Washington in 1993 to work for CBS News from its D.C. bureau. There, she was the lead reporter covering the 1994 Clinton health plan and campaign finance.

Douglass jumped to ABC news in 1998, covering the Clinton impeachment trial for the network. She travelled with presidential candidates during the 2000 election and was named ABC's Capitol Hill correspondent in December 2000.

In that post, she covered the 2002 Enron scandal, and chronicled the panic in Congress on Sept. 11, 2001.

Douglass retired from reporting in 2006 and took a fellowship at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press. She worked with New York University on a project to analyze how partisanship had paralyzed Congress. Douglass switched to print in 2007, writing about the 2008 election for the National Journal and hosting the magazine's weekly radio program.

Joining Obama

Douglass first met Obama is 2005 as a reporter, and said she was impressed with his "unusually calm demeanor." When she was a Harvard fellow, Douglass offered him debate advice in 2007.

In May 2008, Douglass accepted a position as senior strategist and spokeswoman for the Obama presidential campaign. She explained her decision this way: "I have spent my lifetime sitting on the sidelines watching people attempt to make change. I just decided that I can't sit on the sidelines anymore."

The move came as the Obama campaign was being attacked for a lack of women in top leadership positions.

Douglass's hiring prompted criticism from some media watchers, who said the move would only confirm what pundits had been saying for months - that the media was in the bag for Obama.

An official for Hillary Rodham Clinton's rival presidential campaign told Atlantic reporter Marc Ambinder in an email that "this is scandalous and further undermines the media's ability to claim independence overall."

On the campaign trail, Douglass served as one of the campaign's public faces, and helped facilitate relationships between the campaign and reporters. David Axelrod called her an asset who is "fluent in national issues."

After Obama's win, Douglass served as the chief spokeswoman for the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Health Reform

In May 2009, Douglass was named to the Health and Human Services Department Office of Health Reform, and assigned out indefinitely to the White House Office of Health Reform, where she heads communications.

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